filia.die frauenstiftung

filia’s funding transforms money into social action.

• strategy
• solidarity
• sustainability

filia aims to promote two themes in the next three to five years: Participation and Freedom from violence. Women and girls should be able to take on leadership roles in society and live in safety. filia promotes women’s projects that set the course for this.

With all her grantmaking, filia is committed specifically to the women and girls who are exposed to multiple discrimination, not only on the grounds of their gender, but also because of their skin colour, their origin or their sexual orientation. Human rights apply for everyone. filia’s money flows above all to those who stand outside the mainstream.

Central and Eastern Europe has developed to become a regional priority area of filia. With 50% of her funding resources, filia strengthens women’s organisations working to create structures for an equal stakeholding in society and for a life without violence for women and girls.
Change takes time. And women’s organisations need reliable support in order to be able to bring influence to bear sustainably. That is why filia works with selected partners over longer periods: filia promotes women’s NGOs with strategic grants running over several years. filia also uses the synergies of the global women’s funding movement and enters into strategic cooperations with local women’s funds. Local women’s funds are donors who have set themselves the goal of supporting and financing the women’s movement in their context. As mediators, they pass on filia’s funding and contribute their field knowledge, their good contacts and their enthusiasm for women-headed change. Accordingly the resources are expended as effectively as possible.
Longer processes make it possible to get to know each other. filia backs up the partnerships that run over several years with a tailored evaluation.

filia means “daughter”. In Germany, filia spends 20% of its funding resources on promoting girls and young women. Girls and young women are to be enabled to take their own decisions and to develop their full potential. They can assume social responsibility as actors and bring about change. filia strengthens them in this by targeted funding of creative projects in which the girls and young women can translate their own ideas into practice and sound out and expand their own possibilities.
Girls also play a central role in the decisions we take here – they recommend projects for funding to the Foundation Board. In the Girls’ Advisory Council young women (age group 12 to 20) from North Germany meet and discuss which of the projects submitted they find most convincing. Subsequently they visit one of the projects and can experience for themselves how the funds are converted into activities for girls and young women.
With this model filia fleshes out its aim to empower and provide a stakeholding in society.

filia has a vision of a just world to which women make crucial contributions. That is why filia deploys 20% of her funds on women in countries of the “Global South” and together with the money brings empowerment into disadvantaged regions of the world. Women are affected beyond proportion by the impacts of climate change, financial crisis and wars. By cooperating with women’s funds in other parts of the world, filia can act with solidarity worldwide and support women who stand up for more just distribution of resources and power and for respect of their dignity and their human rights.

filia stands firmly in the world and responds flexibly to political change processes. The Urgent Action Fund with 10% of the funding resources is reserved to support actions with which women use a unique opportunity. Women’s organisations from all over the world can receive small grants that are paid out quickly and can thus intervene in unforeseen social situations in order to strengthen their participation and position, defend women and girls against violence and make women’s rights publicly visible.